CAS438 Four Botanical Poinsettias

Hello everyone!  This week's CAS challenge is Christmas in July, and I had a great time playing around with different ideas.  I did a series of Four Botanical Poinsettias, all with different degrees of simplicity.  All of these cards use the same poinsettias stamp as well as the sentiment from Botanical Blocks IV (Papertrey Ink).  I've arranged them from the easiest to the most time consuming here:

This one above is the easiest card of the four.  It's just a matter of embossing the poinsettias and the sentiment with white embossing powder and then adhering the pieces to a white card base.

This one was my little experiment to see what this would look like in a monochromatic gray.  I wanted to try something that was not in Christmas colors, and I love how this turned out.  I embossed the poinsettias with silver embossing powder and then I colored in the flowers with a Versamark reinker.  The Versamark darkens the cardstock and it results in a very subtle but powerful coloring.

This card above is the third in my series.  I wanted to try coloring the poinsettias with Copic markers, but I wanted to save a little time by not coloring in the background around the flowers.  So I stamped the poinsettias on Smoky Slate (soft gray) cardstock and colored just the poinsettias and leaves with Copic markers.  I used Liquid Mercury Nuvo drops to fill in all the little dots inside and around the flowers.  The sentiment was embossed with silver embossing powder.  I love the unusual color combo of red, green, white, black, and silver.  It's a fresh new perspective on Christmas.

This last card is the most time consuming of the four.  I stamped the poinsettias onto white cardstock and colored the entire piece with Copic markers.  The background around the flowers is colored with a soft gray (C1) Copic marker.  The little dots inside the flowers and around the outside were covered with Liquid Mercury Nuvo Drops.  I embossed the sentiment with silver embossing powder.  If I had to pick a favorite card today, this card is tied with the monochromatic gray card for first place.  :-)

I hope you've enjoyed my cards today.  Have you started on your Christmas cards for this year??